Tag Archives: Writing

WordPerfect 5.1 is legendary among tech geeks of a certain age, and still has devoted users. I used various incarnations of WordPerfect as my main word processor and brief[1] writing tool until just a few years ago, when I succumbed to the inevitable force of change, and switched to Microsoft Word. Now, though, I’m not even using a traditional word processor as my main brief writing application, because I’ve discovered that Scrivener is a fantastic tool for that purpose.

If you’ve been waiting for Scrivener to hit the iPad and iPhone, there’s finally light at the end of the tunnel. Literature and Latte, the popular writing app’s developer, has announced that Scrivener for iOS is now feature complete and has entered a closed beta. The initial version of the iOS version will use Dropbox to sync with the Mac and Windows versions. A summer release has been targeted.

I’ve found Scrivener on the Mac to be quite handy for legal writing. I can organize research within the app, and break down my document into sections that I can easily rearrange. The grand plan, of course, is to use the app to write a novel some day.

We recently looked at Markdown, a markup format that lets you easily create HTML-formatted text. What can make Markdown even easier to use is if you use an app that supports it. On the Mac, Markdown apps are plentiful. On Windows, not so much. Fortunately, if you’re on Windows, you do have WriteMonkey. WriteMonkey is a Markdown tool, but describing it as such just scratches the surface.

If you’re a geek, you may have heard of Markdown. What is it? Markdown is a format that you use to write text that can then be converted to valid HTML. The hallmark of Markdown is that it is easy to read and to write.